The smartphone application known as “Uber” has brought into focus opportunities for sharing resources (such as vehicles) through a system designed to link available vehicles and drivers with guest users who have need of a ride. “Ride sharing” initially was a means for reducing rush hour congestion by small groups of co-workers who knew each other, but has evolved to operate essentially as a “for hire” service mediated through the Internet. However, the service has a high cost to the resource providers—the drivers—raising the issue as to whether sharing has become exploitation.
There is a need for resource sharing that operates with little or no cost to the resource provider, and in fact provides welcome reciprocity, such that roles may be interchanged and shared between resource providers and resource consumers. Sharing would be improved if providers and consumers both are able to draw on the resources of others to solve problems, and in turn provide resources that the system may use to solve problems such as living alone as we become more elderly, recovering a lost dog or cellphone, preventing mishaps to children who may otherwise not have adult supervision in this increasingly 7/24 workday world, and other challenges we face in everyday living.
More effort to explore the new sharing capacity of Internet-compatible nodal devices may help to ameliorate these and related problems. To date, efforts in this direction have necessitated that proprietary networks be built. No means for distributing shared resources fairly and without exploitation has been achieved. However, information sharing systems, whereby system resources are more efficiently shared in background, may yet achieve unexpected emergent properties, including synergies of function and new applications or properties.